>>585128>"mocap has put the industry deep into uncanny valley with no way out">"no it hasn't">"muh toy story"Please explain why you think toy story is in any way a good indication of a) realistic animation and b) photorealistic cg

>>585118I'm starting to believe that the humain brain is way too good at reading other human faces. We've been doing it for eons, so of course even the latest CGI accomplishment will always look weird.

Gollum probably holds up today as one of the best because, though realistic as a living being, he's not human. Other creatures like the prawns in District 9 and hard surface robots and stuff also have a better chance to succeed. But humans? Sorry, no. Tarkin was nice and all, but still way off:

>Animation (biggest flaw at the moment imo, especially in the subtle nuances of facial expressions)>Sub surface scattering and other material physical values, including the million tiny hair and fuzz messing with the skin>Variations of tension but mass retention of muscles, tendons, and other underlying anatomical structure>The eyes. Every single time.>Fully simulated wrinkles and folds>Integration and interaction with actors in live footage, saturation, contrasts, etc.

Overall, this should be done scarcely. Same goes with de-aging. Finally, ffs, let dead people be dead.

>>585118>uncanny valleyThere's the problem. There is no valley and there is nothing shrewd or un-clever about the visual reality. Vfx falls short simply because instead of at least trying to replicate the noise that bombards our senses they cater to trying to ram all sorts bad theories into one visual.

>>585239>mostly artist competence and effortILM is top shelf regarding that

>light is a wave. renderers will have to start treating it like one eventuallySounds clever but actually bullshit. Ultimately, photons end up taking a single path and bounce until absorption, something that renderers (even biased ones) can do with great accuracy. You don't need to know all the microscopic probabilities and interference (if any) when dealing with macroscopic objects, only the end result. How would you even include quantum properties into a render engine? Enlighten us

>>585233If a 1998 free toyota could go as fast and look as good as a ferrari or lambo (which is exactly how good blender is in relation to max and modo) then exactly why the fuck would you need a ferrari or lambo?

The thing is Blender cannot do all the stuff 3ds Max or Maya can do. It can do a lot of stuff and sometimes its even much faster than Max or Maya, but as a whole Blender is not as feature rich as either of those.

So your 1998 free Toyota could go SOMETIMES as fast and as good looking as my Ferrari and Lambo.

Also why the fuck would you not want a free (stolen) Ferrari, Lambo, Ducati and Bugatti in your garage?

>>585268>Freelancing with Blender.Customer sends a .max or .mb file.Customer gives you an Openvdb fileCustomer wants the Rig in MayaCustomer wants you to use his own custom shaders only compatible with Arnoldetc...

>>585279Man in the high Castle will be name-dropped by Blender-fanboys for YEARS, when everybody else has already forgotten that this mediocre adaption of an P.K.Dick book even exists. Doesn't matter that 95% of all VFX in that TV-Series are Set extensions which are piss easy to do and all the real VFX where done in Houdini or Nuke and composed together.

>>585282It takes 2 seconds for the customer to tell you that you either read the "dogshit" files or can search for another job.

>>585118I went to the movie with a friend and he though the guy was real so I'll say it's pretty close. But like a fw comments already said, it's the eyes, the smooth movements and I'll also add the face texture. It just seem... too smooth

>>585293I worked with architects, advertising people and car-manufacturers. Converting File formats is a business and there are specific companies doing that stuff for you (and its expensive). Its an eat or die situation. Either you can do it (now!) or you're out. Thankfully i am not doing that anymore. Doing Unreal now.

Back to topic.

What about Logan? How does it come that an company like ILM's end result is worse than what some unknown (to me) VFX company can do.Here watch this video starting at 8 minutes and decide for yourself:

>>585296Because ILM didn't have head scans of Tarkin. These guys put Hugh Jackman in a huge capture rig and have his real face from every angle in various lighting conditions as a reference. Also they didn't use the double in scenes where you have to stare at his face for a long time.

Actors are touched up by CG all the time. It's when you have to completely replace them lies the issue.

>>585348that happens every blue moon.and the last time it happened i needed a DAE file but the blender exporter was broken, so i handed it to a friend to fix it.shorty after i found the autodesk fbx converter and i didn't have to do it anymore

>>585118Unless you have virtually unlimited processing power at hand for your project + about 2 years for an entire studio to spend on a single scene of about 10 seconds, we will never achieve realism.

No matter how advanced tech gets, the human cognition is superior.

Example: you will never recognize hair as 'real' unless you literally render every single hair on your head in perfect geometry which reacts to wind and light.

Example: you will never recognize an eye as real unless it reflects every single light movement perfectly, unless every fiber in the iris reacts naturally to stimuli.

Making a whole face 'real' is virtually impossible, even with today's state of the art tech. Let alone a whole human or whole scene.

We are far from realism and it is questionable if we'll ever achieve it. The real question should be: WHY do we want that? Is it necessary for our entertainment? Technology will advance greatly in the next 500 years and the products we create will be a different dimension from now, but we'll always be able to tell it's 'just CG'.

>>585396Wait for 20 more years or so. Yes Moore's law is coming to an end but our tooling and processes are improving as well - Substance Painter was released in 2014. The AI revolution is going to make a huge impact in the CG art world though it is mostly in academic papers at this point.

>>585396This is so wrong it hurts. CG needs to be good enough to fool the part of our brain specifically designed to process faces. It doesn't need to be 100% atomically correct in every regard. We are good with processing facial details but not THAT good.

>>585475It depends of the state of mind. If you suspend disbelief you might oversee it. On the other hand, human perception is THAT good when it comes to recognize a human from something else. That is an evolutionary trait.Also the subconscious mind has a big role in it, your actual perception is much richer, the brain filters out a lot of information which you don't see consciously.

It's easy to bash 3DFX when it is made badly or mediocre, OP. 'Rogue' has been rushed and it shows. They had to pump it quick, no time for perfectionism. Here is an example of what you get when you take the time and effort to achieve "perfection".youtube_com/watch?v=HjHiC0mt4Ts

People aren't thinking outside the box enough. I believe either a combination of still images and CGI could be the key in the future. You could have a camera go 360 degrees around and have full range of the animation. Taking small strips of an image and wrapping it around the model with the moving body parts being CGI. I don't know why these kinds of methods haven't gotten the attention they deserve. There could really be some major advances if taken seriously.

>>585396Painters and artists have achieved hyper-realism long ago. You can look up hyper realistic drawings or paintings and easily be fooled into thinking they're photographs.

>>585459If throwing grains in the mud and eating the weed that grows afterwards counts as revolution, then using AI for everything counts too.

Also, the human brain has limited capacity. It has to fit inside a skull, grow from one cell, work on sugar, self-repair and be based on previous architecture. We can do better with silicon, buildings, electricity and starting from scratch.

>>585560>We can do better with silicon, buildings, electricity and starting from scratch.the brain is more powerful and efficient than any cpu ever created. Nobody has any idea how to match the efficiency

>>585242Well I didn't mean to go that far. I mostly meant accounting for diffraction of light, really. I can't make any claims on how much it would impact renders, though. It's just a detail I see being ignored.

>>585118I used to believe EVERYONE can tell that there is something weird about uncanny valley. Tarkin just looks like a Playstation 6 character. The thing is: normies don't even notice it! I've watched this film with my girlfriend on the silver screen and I've asked her "do you notice anything about this character?" But the entire film she didn't notice anything odd and didn't notice that he wasn't real and just a CGI character. At first I would blame her. Then we would ask other people who saw the film and they didn't notice it either. GAMERS - people who are trained to see 3d - all noticed it but people who don't have much contact with 3d couldn't tell Tarkin wasn't real. This shocked me.

>>585118The first thing that stood out to me in this scene was the reflection of the light on his skin, and generally how the light interacted with him (eyes, face). Putting him right by an actual human actor, especially with such a harsh contrast in the lighting on each character, reallllllly made it obvious which was fake. Also, I don't know what method they used to animate him, but it looked like he was moving through jello - the movements looked way too coordinated and thought out.

>>585173I think for normies it can kind of pass. But anyone in CG is going to spot it in an instant and think something like "that specularity seems too high around the eyes"

In my opinion, MoCap always looks "floaty", like the weight is always wrong, because you are never using an actor with the same weight as the onscreen thing. It needs to be heavily processed by animators afterward. The Gollum/Planet Apes actor think his acting goes straight to the film without hours and hours and days and days of animators wiping his digital ass. As a rigging fag I feel like even in high budget films I spot shit like if a limb is in FK or IK. One of many bad parts of being a CG fag is you aren't as easily impressed. I was pretty wowed by Avatar except for any time the aliens and humans where on screen together. They simply do not exist on the same world.

Rigs are based on perfectly rotating pivots, which is not at all how real bones work. You are always going to be missing things like how a person looks slightly different each day. Today I woke up and my eyes feel a little puffy and my hair is doing something a little weird on the side. In CG everything is always made to a perfect out of the box default look, when nobody looks like that by default, so everything is built on a default of "perfect" that makes things feel wrong.

>>585781For instance, look at this simple ass shot in comparison to any CG human or CG anything. It's not HiRez, it doesn't feel too "perfect".

This would be impossible in CG. The hands would look fake, the skin wouldn't crumple right, you'd never get the feeling of something relaxing. This guy ruins all of Avatars cgi, he looks too real, he is too human. This guys whole body changes when in a tense scene or in a relaxed scene, his whole muscle structure functions differently his skin tightens, the amount of sweat he produces changes from seconds to second. Minute changes in blood flow cause things you don't notice unless they aren't there.

You put this single character near some CG and he make all that effort look like shit.

>>585784>This would be impossible in CG. The hands would look fake, the skin wouldn't crumple right, you'd never get the feeling of something relaxing. This guy ruins all of Avatars cgi, he looks too real, he is too human. This guys whole body changes when in a tense scene or in a relaxed scene, his whole muscle structure functions differently his skin tightens, the amount of sweat he produces changes from seconds to second. Minute changes in blood flow cause things you don't notice unless they aren't there.it will be possible in 5 years when we have better AI

>>585788I agree with the idea that technological advances will eventually advance the state of the art to true photorealism but "AI takes care of it in 5 years" is a bad meme. I've been at it for a while and while things are changing quickly they aren't changing that quickly. Let's see where things stand in 25 years or so.

>>585805>>585881what is AI even suppose to take care of exactly? bringing human-like imperfections or what? when it comes to creating main characters for movies or games, automation isnt that much involved

>>585286I'll name drop SuperMansion and Hardcore Henry, actually. Since those two use Blender for VFX as well.https://vimeo.com/171674521https://www.blender.org/news/hardcore-henry-using-blender-for-vfx/

Hell, the film industry's been using the program for animatic purposes, like on Spider-Man 2:https://web.archive.org/web/20070221025521/https://www.blender.org/features-gallery/testimonials/

An answer from a human perspective: We are hardwired to look for the human face, and we know what it looks like, therefore, when something is even slightly off, it's noticable. We have a negative emotional response to something that is fairly human but not quite because it resembles a corpse, it does not appear to be fully alive

>>586183>Visuals accounting for 80% of a film's scoring.>Being that concerned with visualsMakes sense you'd think this given the board we're on. You probably like a lot of well polished and sculpted turds.

>>586497You seem confused. I never mentioned artist skills. I was only talking about the ability of the software. Also what part about the stolen car analogy did you not understand.?Tell me about how a car-thief has buyers remorse, fuckchode.

>>586536Obviously, the answer is to make an entire 3D movie so realistic that people will think its' real, but without an inch of real stuff that makes people notice the subtle differences between the real stuff and the 3D stuff.

Alternatively, we just need to figure out how to simulate flesh and we are done.

I stand by the fact that people don't realise shit's CG if they don't have any reason to. Tarkin was dragged through the mud because dude's dead, and as far as anyone knew he wouldn't be rising from the dead to shoot the scene. And the opposite's true, things that are unusual enough are instantly called out to be CG, 'a bloo bloo look at that shit render, the materials aren't even real looking, fake ass CG shit" and then wow surprise it's really all practical effects, or none at all. We've come a long way and I think the only reason shit like this happens is purely from confirmation bias.

I know because I've never heard anyone talk shit about the comps we've worked on, that are actually 100% CG, but are so mundane and low-key that they have no reason to suspect it to be CG, while it actually 100% is. Meanwhile a CG-less shot somehow gets called out for shit CG just because it's out of the ordinary, and we all just sit down shrugging because we know nobody's done shit for that shot.

>>587542Bit confusing how this is written but I get the idea: the confirmation bias and the fact that you "know" its CGI seems to be enough to shit on it x1000 more.

Its like when Mad Max came out, people were like "hooolllyy shit its all practical and it looks so good!!!" ... yeah but there was a ton of CGI too, just well executed and used appropriately.

Good CGI is indeed seamless with visuals of the movie, unlike shitshows like most DC movies, Transformers (despite the robots looking great, its just waaay too much) and the Matrix sequels back in the day.

>>587542I second this thougth. A layman probably doesn't notice cgi Rachel in BR 2049 without knowing that the original actress is old now. Maybe it couldve gone over my head too, but knowing the background, I started looking for the uncanny stuff.

Time and talent will always be the biggest hurdles. You simply can't half ass these things.

That said, I believe that procedural generation will help a lot with creating photorealistic CG in the near future. Automatically generating realistic skin textures and shaders, along with generic human models will go a long way.

Same here. Thought it was a blended outtake from the original or a tweaked lookalike at the time.

I think the key was a lot of restraint when it came to the lighting and contrast...this is what ILM always screws up. Look at how terrible the Star Wars: Attack of the Clones era Yoda looks...they always go overboard on their textures.

>>585793They got too cocky with it, when her face was inexpressive, it was pretty fucking amazing, especially on the big screen. At first I assumed they had just comped in footage from the original, since the lighting was basically the same in that room, and at one point they had shown original footage of her slowed down with really blatant interpolation>they cut away from CG Rachaelprobably a good idea>they cut back, then cut away againoh wow, they're really going for it>she's still inexpressiveprobably a good idea>they cut back again, and she talks and smiles slightlythey fucking blew it! Why risk it when they were getting away with it!?

>>589287To add to this, I feel the goal for really convincing virtual humans is twofold, realistic rendering, which BR2049's Rachael proves we've basically attained as something that is definitely reachable (depending on certain conditions of course), but also convincing animation, which I've felt for many years now most current efforts leave a hell of a lot to be desired. A photo-real person does nothing to convince you of its veracity if the way it moves feels off. I have issues with motion capture clearly signalling itself in a way that I can't really pin down, but that's at least better than what I see all the time in superhero movies for instance, which is just fucking cartoonish keyframed animation everywhere.

Terminator Genisys's 80s Arnie (webm related) was a CGI person I thought was actually pretty good, at least from these vfx reels, (I'm not going to actually go and watch this blatantly awful movie). The close-up here could easily be mistaken for the real thing, and that is of course because they're attempting to literally replicate an exact scene from the original, so they have something they can work towards matching exactly...

>>589298Now here's where it starts to fall apart. He goes under these lights which totally changes the lighting on his face and doesn't look nearly as good, (I didn't webm that part, you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ZAH0ETqyI ) but nevermind that, once he turns and runs for the real Arnold it just looks fucking awful, and it's the way he moves that looks bad. There's even a stand-in in his motion capture pajamas who I don't think they've tried to match all that much, the animation is pretty clearly keyframed rather than actual motion capture. These CGI-fest action movies are full of dodgy animation like this.

>>589300The example I usually bring up when talking about this is Spider-Man movies, since he's covered head-to-toe you can't fault it as a poor CGI rendering of a fleshy human (I've seen people nit-pick the rendering in Homecoming, I've not seen it but I get the impression they'll just think any brightly coloured CGI fabric will look fake), instead where it truly falls down is in the motion.

Now obviously he's doing things that you can't really do. In this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpLXI4w2nuc it shows they referenced a guy on wires doing most of these moves, so there's that, but even if they motion captured that guy, they wouldn't be able to have him do the whole extended sequences of moves they show Spider-Man doing, not without awkwardly stitching together a bunch of different recordings of his movements which I doubt will improve things. So of course it's a real problem, these scenes always stick out to me because they've poorly animated someone doing a thing which is obviously impossible. So how could it ever look realistic?

This is just speculation that I'm not qualified to explain how to actually implement, but I figure the answer is that they shouldn't just stop at keyframing the animation. This same Spider-Man video shows that they simulate cloth movement and muscle movement, and even incorporate physics simulations into some of the swinging. It seems to me they should go a step further than that and simulate character movement as a whole, like say for example you have the guy doing the keyframed animation as before, the animation of what they want Spider-Man to be doing, and then on top of that you have a computer simulation do its own pass over the animation, simulating the literal physics and momentum of the actual skeleton and muscles and body mass, incorporate some some sort of algorythmically-determined "human noise" into the movements, layer that into the original animation and end up with a potentially more plausible result.

>>589302I'm sure this is a long way away, since I'm basically on the verge of saying we should have the computer simulate acting itself. As a caveat I need to admit I might be totally wrong about this, and that the technological innovations I'm asking for here aren't necessary and instead I should just be asking "for the animator to be better at his job and put more work into it", it does seem like the majority of the time they just stop at "good enough". I'm also sure it's possible this is more a time issue than a skill issue, like a lot of artistic endeavours, especially since it's well known the VFX industry is so overworked they're often doing this shit flying by the seat of their pants

>>589303This scene always makes me laugh. The Winter Soldier is such a grounded film (I mean relatively, for a Marvel movie), and yet right in the middle it has this moment of ridiculousness that sticks out like a sore thumb.

>>589392That's the approach Lola have become renowned for doing like in the Marvel movies (and secretly touching up celebrities to make them look younger), I couldn't tell you why they might decide to use one method over the other, I imagine there are a multitude of factors, and the simplest could well be that they went with the preference of the effects studio they were already working with. Rachael was by MPC, who also did Arnie in Terminator Genisys: >>589297>>589298>>589300 - they didn't only do Arnie in that film, but a great number of effects, and the same is probably true for BR2049.

Lola's method as I understand it is practically highly customised 2D animation and textures mapped onto the actor's face, although obviously more complicated than just that. It's less comprehensive than just making a whole CGI head, but I would guess it's also less likely to completely fail outright, and is more malleable, but it can also be really clear that it's just textures moving around on a face, like how the old Peggy in The Winter Soldier wasn't all that convincing.

What's the point anyway in trying so hard to make real humans in films, when there's million of real humans to pick? I can understand when you are making alien-like creatures or monsters, but why spending millions of dollars and autistically adding pores, sweat and hair to make a normal guy in 3D?

Moff Tarkin in Rogue One was absurd because they could have just used a real actor in make up. It won't be exactly like Peter Cushing, but who cares? Martin Landau in Ed Wood was really convincing as Bela Lugosi, and we didn't need to look at a reptilian CGI model that looked exactly like Bela Lugosi, but was floating around the screen.

>>595004It's completely bonkers and in their arrogance, the cheaper way of an actor with make up looks better and more alive. Also in Ed Wood, again, Vincent D'Onofrio did a great Orson Welles.We know Welles is dead, when don't want to look at a scary ultra realistic 3D zombie or an Andy Serkins puppet.